Issue 59 - As easy as A,B,C

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As easy as A,B,C

New to whisky? Then this new series goes back to basics. Dominic Roskrow explains

So there we were, having a heated debate about what did and didn't constitute pot still whiskey, when someone suggested we look it up in a glossary.

Which we did, only to discover that the definition given included references to two other technical pieces of information which just clouded the debate further.

“How on earth can anyone get to grips with this stuff?” offered one of our group.

And thus was the idea for this series born.

As we learn more about whisky we quickly forget how vast the subject can be.

Everyone's got to start somewhere, so here it is; Whisky Magazine's attempt to lead new whisky enthusiasts through the basics.

Each issue we'll write about one of the key aspects of whisky as well as rewrite the glossary letter by letter in a bid to make it better and easier to understand. Just so it doesn't all get too techie we've also thrown in some mind-blowingly amazing or mindnumbingly trite pieces of trivia, too.

First up, whisky styles.

TYPES OF WHISKY
In essence all whisky – whiskey – is made the same way. But at the ingredient stage there are three styles of whisky – whiskies made using one type of grain; whiskies made using more than one grain in the production process; and whiskies using more than one grain that are combined together after production.

Scotland is of course the most famous whisky-producing country on the planet and it uses two of these methods. But Ireland and America both specialise in whiskeys made in a different way to the...